This week's top dish from Eater, Curbed's restaurant, bar, and nightlife blog...
1) West Village over-done, under-crowded restaurant Sheridan Squarelost its chef, got a new one and found itself on the Deathwatch. 2) The long anticipated Delicatessen finally opened (above), took four seconds to start pissing off its Soho neighbors. 3) Soho dessert trailblazer Tailor turns one next month, and in pre-celebration sat down with Eater for a chat. 4) Meatpacking District stink hole Merkato 55 also lost a chef this week, one Marcus Samuelsson. Bring on the bottle service! 5) Post-Florent carcass R & L is an absolute ghost town and to celebrate they've replaced the famous Florent neon with a gaudy, and flashing, Open! sign.
· Eater [eater.com]
The shell for Jean Nouvel's new Vision Machinecontinues to rise on Eleventh Avenue, and it has now reached the top of its neighbor to the north. That one is an 8-story deco-adorned pile of bricks better known as the Bayview Correctional Facility, and it houses a hundred or so of our less-fortunate female citizens. Some folks might not be aware that this medium security prison sits cheek by jowl with Jean's vision in glass, whose glitzy condos will soon tower above Bayview's roof-top "recreation" areas where both inmates and staff go to smoke a cig, smell the flowers and enjoy the views of the High Line and Chelsea Piers. But apparently somebody has taken notice. Perhaps the proximity of money and misery made them nervous and so they ordered up a whole new set of bars and cages. Or maybe it's just time for a bit of remodeling, now that the neighborhood is getting so posh. Either way, this is yet another example of what makes NYC so great: citizens of all stripes living close and getting along. And how grand it is to see that Knox Martin's mural "Venus" hasn't been fully eclipsed and can still be seen where Nouvel's fantastic Vision meets the reality of Bayview Correctional. A bit of new and old side by side, and both the better for it.
· Jean Nouvel's Vision Rises on West 19th Street [Curbed]
· Will Nouvel's 100 Eleventh Eclipse Venus? [Curbed]
· Bayview prison:A Chelsea neighbor often unnoticed [Chelsea Now]
Back in February we hit up the Hudson River Park Trust meeting regarding the continued drama surrounding Pier 40, but another item on the docket caught our attention. It was Pier 53, specifically the old firehouse at the end of the tiny pier that sticks out of the Gansevoort Peninsula, which the city wants to turn into a garbage transfer station. The FDNY wanted to tear down the building (green roof, above) to make way for more updated digs for its marine division, but many people wanted the building preserved, even if it meant moving the structure and turning it into a museum or something. The debate has been going on for a while, and at the meeting it seemed like the Trust's board was interested in keeping the building around. We haven't heard much on the topic since. Until Friday, when a tipster alerted us that the firehouse was just demolished. Oops! The Villagerreports that the FDNY unit, and its hella cool fire boat, have relocated to Pier 40 until the new facility gets built. We headed over to the banks of the mighty Hudson to check out the scene. Results above.
· Preservationists are alarmed, but fireboat house to be rebuilt [Villager]
· Meatpacking District Will Take Out the Garbage [Curbed]
You knew the day was coming, and now there's no hiding from it. Above, the scene in the Meatpacking District just after 8:00AM this morning after the doors opened and those in search of spiritual fulfillment through technology—also known as the new iPhone 3G—poured in. Racked is reporting live from Apple and AT&T stores all day long; do drop in, won't you?
· iPhrenzy: Doors Open for the iPhone 3G! [Racked]
When the Times asked Cooper Square Hotel co-developer Matt Moss what hotel guests will think of the grimy old tenement building left standing on the hotel's property, he famously responded that peering down on residents hanging laundry out to dry is "the kind of thing people want to see." Apparently so! Over at the Hotel Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District, some guests have decided to take rich folks' fascination with laundry even further, converting their balcony to a drying rack. Well, gritty does seem to be the trend in hotels these days.
· Everyday Chatter [Vanishing New York]
To everyone who thinks the Meatpacking District is filled with trash: You don't know how right you are! Late yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg and the State Legislature finally reached an agreement to build a marine waste transfer station on the Gansevoort Peninsula, a 1.4-acre piece of land that juts out into the Hudson at the end of Gansevoort Street. This is all part of the mayor's plan to make each borough responsible for its own garbage, and this particular battle has been raging for over three years (here's an early Villager story on the subject, and the picture at right comes from another oldie). The Hudson Square garbage garage is another controversial piece of this puzzle, but the Gansevoort waste station is particularly charming because it will sit in the new Hudson River Park. But don't worry, the agreement calls for the bike and pedestrian pathways adjacent to the transfer station site to remain open during construction. Yummy! The plan still needs state approval, so the McNallys and von Furstenbergs of the neighborhood still have time to cut the appropriate checks and get this off the table.
· Deal to Build Waste Station in Manhattan [NYT]
· CurbedWire: Brooklyn Bridge Gets Crazy Lights, MePa Gets Trash [Curbed]
The hottest starchitect in the universe, this year's Pritzker Prize winner Jean Nouvel and creator of the jaw droppingly awesome Tower Verre on West 53rd, has another killer project on the rise at 100 Eleventh Avenue in West Chelsea. The first couple of floors of the futuristic Vision Machine (or Mashine for our ruble-spending friends) have been poured and the concrete is beginning to pile up on West 19th Street between the High Line and the Hudson River. The 23-story tower will be the shining beacon at the end of this project-filled block, which promises to be the frontrunner for Block of the Year for 2008. Across the street is a groundbreaker from fellow starchy Frank Gehry, the billowing IAC headquarters. The same block will soon house condo-ites aplenty in the 26-unit big 'n boxy 520 West Chelsea from Selldorf Architects and the now-it's-a-big-hole but one-day-will-be a stack o' metal boxes from Shigeru Ban. Smart kids have already started saving their pennies.
· Starchitect Power! Nouvel's MoMA Tower Wins Over LPC [Curbed]
· On Art and Starchitecture in Far West Chelsea [Curbed]
· Development Du Jour: 520 West Chelsea [Curbed]
Comments
To everyone who thinks the Meatpacking District is filled with trash: You don't know how right you are! Late yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg and the State Legislature finally reached an agreement to build a marine waste transfer station on the Gansevoort Peninsula, a 1.4-acre piece of land that juts out into the Hudson at the end of Gansevoort Street. This is all part of the mayor's plan to make each borough responsible for its own garbage, and this particular battle has been raging for over three years (here's an early 
